Latin American Studies | Open Access Articles

Over the last three decades Latino studies scholarship has gained increased academic acceptance. However, many administrators continue to doubt the wisdom of sustaining autonomous Latino studies departments, and are devising alternative approaches for incorporating Latino-based knowledge into the university’s mission. This article discusses the academy’s response to the emergence of Latino studies and explores a range of consequences for the field of two institutional arrangements that universities appear to privilege: the horizontal fusion with Latin American Studies, and a vertical absorption into centers for the study of race and ethnic or absorption into American studies.

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Common Origins/"Different" Identities In Two Kaqchikel Maya Towns, Walter E. Little Jan 2003

Common Origins/"Different" Identities In Two Kaqchikel Maya Towns, Walter E. Little

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Kaqchikel Maya residents of San Antonio Aguas Calientes and Santa Catarina Barahona (neighboring towns in Guatemala) tell the same origin story. This story is used to root historically their concepts of collective identity and community. However, residents in each town hold that those in the other town have no real claim to the story. Both towns can equally claim this origin story, but the debate between residents of these towns offers an opportunity to discuss how the meaning of place is related to the historical and ethnographic contexts of which that place's residents are part. By weighing the story and …

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Performing Tourism: Maya Women's Strategies, Walter E. Little Jan 2003

Performing Tourism: Maya Women's Strategies, Walter E. Little

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Walter Little is assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany and codirector of Oxlajuj Aj, Tulane University’s Kaqchikel Language and Culture class in Guatemala. He has conducted fieldwork among Maya handicrafts producers and vendors since 1992 on issues related to tourism, gender roles, and identity performance, and this research is the subject of his book, Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (Austin: University of Texas, 2004).

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Puerto Rico: State Formation In A Colonial Context, Pedro Caban Dec 2002

Puerto Rico: State Formation In A Colonial Context, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

This article examines U.S. Puerto Rico relations during the American century through the prism of the colonial state and identifies eight periods of fundamental political and economic change that altered the conduct of U.S. colonial practice in Puerto Rico. These periods witnessed the emergence, ascendancy and decline of local political coalitions that competed for control of the control state. The coalitions articulated distinct economic projects and pursued different strategies to resolve Puerto Rico's status as an unincorporated territorial possession. Each period was also marked by insular economic restructuring precipitated by shifts in U.S. fiscal policies and changes in the economy, …

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Bombs, Ballots, And Nationalism: Vieques And The Politics Of Colonialism, Pedro Caban Apr 2002

Bombs, Ballots, And Nationalism: Vieques And The Politics Of Colonialism, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Subjects And Immigrants During The Progressive Era, Pedro Caban Oct 2001

Subjects And Immigrants During The Progressive Era, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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Home As A Place Of Exhibition And Performance: Mayan Household Transformations In Guatemala, Walter E. Little Jan 2000

Home As A Place Of Exhibition And Performance: Mayan Household Transformations In Guatemala, Walter E. Little

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies …

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Getting Unstruck On Status: The Politics Of Decolonialization, Pedro Caban Jun 1991